Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 303
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
December 14, 1932
Herewith the photos and correspondence. It is certainly better not to dwell on the difficulties or give them too much force, because, our experience shows us, to do so helps to make them return like a recurring decimal. The Coué formula1 is too crude and simple to be entirely true in principle, but it has a great practical force and behind it there is a very great truth in a world and a consciousness governed by the Overmind Maya: it is this that what we oppose strongly gets power to persist in the consciousness and experience and calls circumstances to its support, what we deny and reject and refuse to support by the power of the Word, tends, after a time and some resistance, to lose force in the consciousness and the circumstances and movements that support it tend also to recur less often and finally disappear. It is fundamentally the principle of the mantra. On that ground I approve of your resolution not to give any more the avalambana [support] of the written word to these things. A constant affirmation from within on the other side – of that which is to be realised – brings always in the end a response from above.
1 A method of autosuggestion in vogue in the early twentieth century, named after the French psychotherapist Emile Coué, which consisted in repeating to oneself that one is fine, getting better all the time, etc.